I really want to like those guys, and that’s driven me to a completely irrational belief that they were in on the joke.

They’re not. And they’re successful. Which means they’ll stay insulated from the criticism they need to hear and continue to be assholes.

What happened to you, Seth Rogan. (I thought) you used to be cool.

Good fucking gravy:

Beyond the weirdness, if you can get there, is a quick portrait of trailer-park America pursuing its urges by any means necessary.

Trailer-park America - what an asshole reviewer.  Trailer park men are evidently hilarious rapists, and it’s okay, because trailer-park women don’t have to consent any more meaningfully than blow-up dolls.

Congratulations, Time magazine, you’ve lowered the discourse faster than Ann Coulter.

But, but Amaaaaanduuuh, it’s “dark” and “edgy” and only these guys could make such awful behavior “funny”. You just don’t get it, you’re too PC.

/snark

I have friends seeing this this weekend, I declined to go. The last Apatow crew movie I saw was Superbad and while I found it funny I have no interest in seeing anything else from Rogen or the other actors. I don’t care that his character is supposed to be mentally ill, Rogen’s been playing the same character since 40-Year-Old Virgin.

And I would have given the filmmaker, Rogen the benefit of the doubt, that maybe the Anna Farris character was into it at first and then fell asleep, but they’ve both basically come out and said that yeah, it’s date rape and the were worried about taking it too far but once they added the line of “Why are you stopping motherfucker” that somehow made it a-okay.

As I said over at Lindsay’s, I haven’t seen the specific commercial that includes this scene, and yet I leap for the remote every time one comes on because I’ve come to loathe it so much.  It’s one of those things that you watch and think, “This is supposed to be a comedy?”  Look, they’re Tasering a guy!  Look, they’re shoving someone’s head into boiling oil!  Hahahahaha!  So funny.

At least Paul Blart: Mall Cop had a couple of snickers in the trailer.

Alright, I’m officially over Seth Rogen.

The confluence of dark comedy and dork comedy isn’t a good place for nuance.  Some things just aren’t a good subject for a laugh.

As explained, it’s a sight gag that just isn’t that funny any way you look at it.  I understand the comedic intent (“shock” comedy has its place,) but fail to see where it’s a good idea to have such a high probability of dual understandings when the implications can be so brutally fucked up if misunderstood.  And this will be.  If they were both completely fucked up, the scene could have worked on some level.  That only she was drunk, and I assume from the trailer he bought the drinks, puts the joke well outside the place of even unsafe humor.  It’s a dangerous message, and not a good one.

And not worth it for the laugh.

Even the cool kids are idiots sometimes.

Mnemosyne, it was never shown on TV. It’s the red band “R” rated trailer that you have to look up on the interwebs. But you haven’t missed anything.

This is off topic-ish, but Rogen was so boring on The Daily Show.  Stewart had to carry the interview for him.

The entire reasoning behind the joke is so ... bizarre. Emotional vulnerable hot chick (was there a sex assault early in the movie, too?), Seth’s in a position of pseudo-authority, he plays on her fears, takes her out and enables her to get WAY to drunk, sticks his tongue down her throat after she vomits, and then has sex with her (on her?) while she’s either passed out or on the border of passing out. “How do we make this okay?”

You don’t. You can’t.

And her being, as it turns out, horny in her drunkenness and confused emotional haze, CERTAINLY DOESN’T.

And its worse, in face. Because it is one of the most insidious aspects of rape, that being raped CAN feel good and CAN induce an orgasm in the victim, at the same time that it is unwanted in every way and a massive violation. But, it felt good. You orgasmed. And he’s such a nice guy the day after.

Maybe it wasn’t rape in the first place.

Ha ha. Fucking dicks.

And the trailer park thing… “Ha ha, that’s how the other half live, getting shit-faced and raping each other. That’s why they have all those kids and why it is moral to eliminate welfare.” Maybe I’m making a leap there that’s unfair.

I hate to think what would happen if Richard Corliss ever went slumming on a Friday night.

Ugh, and I loved Seth so much as Ron on Undeclared!

Won’t be seeing that movie.  I may be one your patriarchal right wingers, but ugh.

They keep shoving the ads for this (and Adventureland) into my Hulu videos.  I kinda wish you could click that “dislike ad” button multiple times.  The best I’ve come up with is turning off the sound and tabbing over to another window, and just hoping I don’t miss anything critical of my show.

I had to look up Seth Rogan on IMDB.  Aside from Kung Fu Panda, I’ve never seen anything with him in it.  Sometimes really I enjoy not sharing a common culture with people my own age.  (Seriously?  Modern comedies are shit on toast, I can’t imagine why any of you would cough up money for that crap.)

OK, two things:

(1) The presence of horrifying things in comedy isn’t _necessarily_ equivalent to endorsing them; Seth Rogen’s discussion about how to “make the scene OK” is, I think, actually a fairly perceptive observation that the scene is _not_ OK… until the muttered expression of consent gets everyone off the hook by letting them stop squirming… which the actor and filmmakers realize is manipulative, artificial, and a bit too convenient.  There _is_ a kind of comedy that aims to lead us towards feelings of discomfort—the so-called “cringe comedy”—or that uses awful acts specifically to make us repulsed, not attracted.

(2) Notwithstanding (1), if a certain person _keeps being the presence of horrifying things in comedy_—and Seth Rogen is starting to earn that reputation—it erodes the benefit of the doubt.  I start to feel like I’m being jerked around and insulted in a smug and lazy way, rather than in a genuinely provocative way.  And it starts to feel like the character is acting malevolently because the filmmakers think it’s fun and “edgy” and maybe even sadistically arousing to wallow in such things.

perceptive observation that the scene is _not_ OK… until the muttered expression of consent

The point is after that, it’s still not okay.

I just wrote a scathing e-mail to Corliss that I’m betting is going to hit his trash bin after he reads the first line. This is all so disgusting. Even movie review websites I ordinarily like are showing their stripes over this movie. It’s depressing.

This just cements my belief that I probably will spend the rest of my life happily never having seen a single Seth Rogen movie.

There _is_ a kind of comedy that aims to lead us towards feelings of discomfort—the so-called “cringe comedy”—or that uses awful acts specifically to make us repulsed, not attracted.

“The Office” is probably one of the best examples right now, especially the dinner party episode from last season.  I watched the entire thing with my hand over my face, because I was just so embarrassed for all of the characters.  But still laughing, because you weren’t supposed to think that any of them were heroic (or even anti-heroic, which becomes its own weird hero thing).  They were just making idiots of themselves in embarrassing ways like the rest of us.

The thing that gets me is that in a twisted sort of way, it *is* okay. But it’s still extremely squicky and sexist and completely divorced from reality.

All I can say is that for every Seth Rogen movie that comes down the pipeline, my desire to see even the better ones tends to fade. (Okay, *maybe* Zack and Miri, but that one occupies a rather odd space.) But this… it sounds like a ripoff of Paul Blart, Mallcop to begin with, and the reviews I’ve seen are inclined to make me agree with Lindsey and Amanda. But here’s the weird part—the Boston Phoenix actually liked it. (But then again, they’re also the paper that defanged David Thorpe, so whatever.)

Flip, I’m the first to say that depiction is not endorsement.  But that’s not the issue here—-actors, script, and critics are in fact promoting the idea that this particular depiction is endorsement.  Which is not okay, and could lead to real women getting assaulted, if men see this and assume (sadly, rightly), that if she’s slutty, you can rape her and no one will say boo about it.

But this… it sounds like a ripoff of Paul Blart, Mallcop to begin with

Or not. Which was the rip, Deep Impact or Armageddon? If Blart is the slapstick spoiler, does it reframe the movie in ways that wouldn’t be evident had it appeared on its own? Does having Seth Rogen in the lead contexturalize it uncomfortably in terms of the School of Apatow or Zack & Miri?

I dunno. I’ve seen the red-band trailer, and don’t see it convey the kind film that Corriss describes.

FlipYr: cringe comedy is easier to do, I think, on TV than in conventional (as opposed to high-indie) cinema. British comedy has been long on cringe since Fawlty Towers, but especially heavy over the past decade, but something like Julia Davies’ Nighty Night doesn’t translate to film. Or American television, for that matter. 

And this is the problem: it’s hard to do unredeemable or barely-redeemable leads in cinema, and dangerous to try, because there’s always that implicit sense that depiction entails endorsement, like a car with bad alignment that veers off to the left when you let go of the wheel.

OK, I mean, I _did_ put that (2) section in there… 

What happens is “OK,” in that it follows the formulas of consent, but not _actually_ OK, because the consent isn’t freely given.  I think Rogan is saying that you’re supposed to feel creeped out by and uncomfortable with what’s happening, -then- feel relieved by the statement of apparent consent, -then- realize that your sense of relief isn’t real.  This is what I think BrianX is getting at when he says “The thing that gets me is that in a twisted sort of way, it *is* okay. But it’s still extremely squicky and sexist and completely divorced from reality.”

So IMHO the objectionable part goes beyond the depiction of date rape; it includes the way the filmmakers seem to feel like “making you feel uncomfortable about the misogynist things you’re watching” is, like, funny.  They’re clever enough to sniff out the objection that they’re staging a scene of date rape, head it off by putting in impaired consent, and then smirk at you if you’re still uncomfortable, saying, “you’re _supposed_ to feel uncomfortable, dumbass.”

it’s hard to do unredeemable or barely-redeemable leads in cinema, and dangerous to try

I think this links to the “trigger” concept I first came across at Shakespeare’s Sister:  at a certain point, it doesn’t really matter what the narrative is, or the context; certain images (like rape and assault) just take over.

No one could have predicted that “dudes are the only people that matter” male-bonding comedy could have led to movies with actual rape scenes weakly justified as well as movies with “kill the women because they’re sluts” scenes. It’s totally unpredictable, just like the failure of trickle-down economics.

/snark

Frankly, I saw this ending point back when 40 year old virgin became oddly popular.

Also, who ever has become the de facto head of “dark comedy” needs to be shot. Network, Heathers, War Inc, these are actually dark comedies, slapping a bunch of “edgy” “non-PC” bits and random swearing on your stale mediocre pile of status-quo propping crap doesn’t make it somehow worthy of dark comedy status, nor is it in any fashion “edgy”.

I suspect movie comedy would be in better shape if the ghosts of Bill Hicks and George Carlin could give swirlies to every movie director that misunderstood that basic idea.

Is it still ‘edgy’ if every damn teenager and 20something male in America basically thinks and says the same shit that these movies promote? It’s like they bottled up ‘edgy’ and started selling it as a product. Kinda like “smoking is cool” in my teenage days…

I thought the whole point of being ‘edgy’ was that you were on the fringe and most people would react badly or be shocked by what you do. This isn’t shock. This is a bunch of dudes high-fiving each other, commenting “oh no, they didn’t!” when the movie says something they like because it sticks it to minorities and women. That’s about as far removed from ‘shocking’ as “booh!”-style loud noises in by-the-numbers horror flicks are ‘horror’.

Beyond the rape, I object to the assumption that this is any way pleasurable for her.  I mean, she’s sick drunk, puking all over.  That’s bad enough.  Then she has this big, sweaty dude on top of her literally pumping away.  Has anybody been in this position? I have.  It was rape.  And it was also NOT pleasurable.  It was painful.  I wanted it to be over.  It did not feel good. 

Can we do away with the patriarchal assumption that penis pumping by itself is pleasurable?

Of course the explosion of dudely comedies at the box office means we’re going to see another version of, “Women like being raped even if they pretend otherwise.”

It always struck me as oddly inconsistent that Deliverance didn’t end up with the Jon Voight character in love with the country folk . . .

Something happened to me with my 10 year old niece yesterday.  I had my niece and nephew over for lunch, and came to find out that my niece, who is so smart, now believes that she is an idiot.  This is all being fostered at home, where gender roles are extremely problematic.  I talked with her at length and she is intimidated because her brother can answer questions her father asks “so fast”.  We talked about how being fast doesn’t mean being right, or being smart.  We talked about deliberate thinkers, like our President.  I mentioned that by the time she was my age she will have seen a couple of woman presidents. 

“Do you really think so?” she asked.

“Oh yes, we almost had one this year.”

“We did?” she asked me, seemingly startled.

And that’s when I, a peace activist who supported first Edwards, and then Obama because of the wars, and because of Hillary’s vote against banning the use of cluster bombs on civilians, realized what was lost.  What the price had been.  And for the first time, I wondered if it had been worth it?  What has Obama given that Hillary wouldn’t have?  Has he stopped war?  Or has he widened it with increased bombings into Pakistan?  For the first time, I really got, in my gut, why Gloria Steinem wrote that editorial in the NY Times backing Hillary.

And what does this all have to do with girls being treated as whores, bitches who are asking for it, while men who get paid to write in newspapers cheer on “give it to the bitch we all know she wants it”? 

Only everything.

who’s been in this position once or twice before, wants the sexual exercise, even if she’s not awake to take an active role in it

This.  Right here.  This is the problem.

Until we can make people understand that people have to be taking an active role in a sexual act for it to be “sex” and not “rape” then we will have people asking stupid questions about where the line is and “is it rape if I only go this far?”

It’s not sex unless you have actively involved consenting adults.  If someone is letting someone else do something to them, it’s not sex.

Fuck them all with chainsaws.

movies with “kill the women because they’re sluts” scenes.

This isn’t new. This is basically every horror/slasher movie since the 1970s.

it’s hard to do unredeemable or barely-redeemable leads in cinema, and dangerous to try, because there’s always that implicit sense that depiction entails endorsement

It’s hard to expect directors, actors, and viewers, after putting their time and hard-earned money into the film (either by making it or watching it), to then somehow not identify with the main characters. The narrative leeway we can achieve in mainstream movies is much more narrow than we are willing to let on.

Even if we’re supposed to hate the characters, even if we’re supposed to be disgusted by everything they do, this is an endorsement of rape.

Why?  Because of the “don’t stop” cop-out.  It sends the message loud and clear: You think this is rape, but it’s not!

But it is, in fact, rape.  If you force yourself on someone, just because she says stuff that indicates that’s she too drunk to understand or that her body is reacting as it does when she has consensual sex, doesn’t mean she’s enjoying it, consenting, or isn’t traumatized.  Juries, who are usually looking for a way to excuse rape, will cling to that.  But it’s still rape. 

By throwing that reaction of hers in, they’re trying to say it’s not rape.  But it is rape.  Therefore, regardless of whether or not you hate the characters, this is rape apologism, because it’s trying to say that rape is not rape.  Regardless of how much we’re supposed to hate the characters.

Caton, that may be true, but I think it’s equally valuable to have a black President, despite racist PUMA narratives to the contrary.

Flipyrwing, you’re ignoring that this isn’t just anycringeworthy punchline, it’s rape. Rape, rape victims, and getting away with it has always been a big joke. It’s always the powerful attacking the powerless, or making somebody powerless. It’s always the worst, most intimate way of kicking somebody when they’re down. It’s always been spoken of by men, while women were silenced. It’s always been this way. Seth Rogan is kicking women when they’re down, and no matter what he says, he’s allying himself with guys who shame rape victims by saying, “What’s a matter, can’t you take a joke?” or whatever else they contemptuously say to shut up women and make fun of rape.

“Caton, that may be true, but I think it’s equally valuable to have a black President, despite racist PUMA narratives to the contrary. “

I know that Obama did for black children what Hillary would have done for my niece, and I definitely don’t discount it.  But I see our youth as more and more color blind, (and just know that I am deeply happy about this) and yet still holding the same old gender discriminations.  In fact, maybe worse so, since they seem to be especially pornified.  It troubles me a great deal.  I want our next President to be a woman.  I draw the line at saying, any woman.  Because I think of Sarah Palin and I choke.  But I won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good either, next time.  No, not Palin or anyone like her, but I’m not going to wait for perfection in a woman candidate.  If she’s good enough for me, if I can make a deal of the lesser of two evils, the way I ALWAYS do with male candidates; I’ll support her.

I am sooooo glad I’m not a young woman now.  I thought it was bad when I was back in the 80s and 90s but I can’t imagine how it must suck these days.  Last night I was at a family dinner with my b/f’s 22 year old daughter and almost 20 year old son in attendence.  Both of them were talking about how they couldn’t wait to see Seth Rogen’s latest film and how he’s teh awesome.  The daughter is quirky and smart but has clearly internalized the sexist tropes in those “edgy” films but thinks they apply to other girls, not her.  The boy is already showing signs of Nice Guy-ism and I have tried to get my Nigel to see it and give him some guidance.  It doesn’t help that he loves those dudely comedies.  He practically memorizes them and repeats the lines ad nauseum as a substitute for regular conversation.  It’s so frustrating to me because I just want to grab him by the collar and give him a stern talking to.  I’m watching a young man turn into a creepy entitled dick right before my eyes.  IBTP.

And so WHAT if the character said “why are you stopping?”  She was DRUNK.  Fucking asshole Richard Corliss is perpetuating the idea that certain women are always in a state of consenting to sex.  Which is what that scene in the movie is doing too. 

From Linday’s post:

But Seth Rogen’s understanding of the joke is entirely different:

When we’re having sex and she’s unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I’m not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next thirty seconds? . . . And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay:“Why are you stopping, motherfucker?”

Eat shit, Rogen.

And for the first time, I wondered if it had been worth it?  What has Obama given that Hillary wouldn’t have?  Has he stopped war?  Or has he widened it with increased bombings into Pakistan?

You’re assuming Hillary would have been any better.  Do you have a link to the Steinem editorial, or anything that might show her as any less a foreign-policy mainstream Democrat than Obama?

As regards the movie, I have a sinking feeling that I’m going to get a 26 year old female friend gushing to me how funny it was.

Every time I read about this scene, my stomach starts to twist in knots and bile rises in my throat.  I’ve never been raped and yet our cultural attitude about rape means that I still get to feel violated on some level when rape comes up in popular culture or media.  Defenses (and in Corliss’ case, endorsement) of this scene just intensify this feeling.

So why does it feel like fewer and fewer of the people I know in real life (as opposed to those in the feminist blogosphere) understand this?  Why does it feel like I am fighting an ever-steeper uphill battle against sexism and misogyny?

Phoenician - I am not assuming Hillary would have been any better.  That was my point.  I used to hope that Obama would be better on foreign policy than Hillary would have been, and that’s why I supported him even though I found it very painful to not support the first woman candidate who really could have become President.  Foriegn policy aside (and that’s a big aside), I love Obama.  Sometimes I think that the right is trying to get him killed ( you know, people like Glenn Beck who it seems to me are inciting hate and violence against him by claiming he is trying to set the American people on fire etc).  And I think that if they did get him killed, it would break my heart.  So this isn’t really about Obama, as much as this is about my really understanding now what a woman President would mean to young girls, especially in our pornified society which sometimes feels it is getting worse and worse.  which brings me to History Mom…

I hear you.  I feel the same way.  It makes you feel very lonely and very frustrated.  Maybe not lonely exactly, but, alone somehow.

I had a bunch of comments on this that didn’t show up…  Maybe I wrote too many in a row and was tagged as trolling, but, really, I wasn’t.

The upshot of them, taken collectively, was to clarify that I wasn’t attempting to use the concept of “dark comedy” to say that there was nothing objectionable about the scene.  I was suggesting instead that the movie could be saying that sexual assault was in fact very bad (especially via the “consent” being so transparently inadequate) but that we could still call it out for its use of sexual assault to make us feel disgusted and outraged just because that adds to the “dark” atmosphere.

Ack, re-clarification:  “...to make us feel disgusted and outraged for no other purpose than to add to the ‘dark’ atmosphere.”

A real head desk of a “musing” on Popmatters. Sweet evil jesus.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/72939-no-means-ho-debating-observe-and-reports-most-controversial-scene/

“I had to look up Seth Rogan on IMDB.  Aside from Kung Fu Panda, I’ve never seen anything with him in it.  Sometimes really I enjoy not sharing a common culture with people my own age.  (Seriously?  Modern comedies are shit on toast, I can’t imagine why any of you would cough up money for that crap.)”

You need to watch “Freaks and Geeks.” Among the best TV shows ever, IMO.

You need to watch “Freaks and Geeks.”

Doesn’t compare with the freak-0-spehere